TakeLessons
Reviews and Complaints

If you are an adult student, the policies on this site are intolerable and unfeasible.The music teachers use this site because if you attempt to cancel even a minute past the 24 hour "cancellation period" you lose your money, unless you happen to have one of a VERY few teachers, who will offer a makeup lesson.

I had a teacher who stole hundreds of dollars because the lessons are prepaid and I had some issues come up that were beyond my control.

I actually paid the teacher for lessons that I never received, JUST TO HOLD MY PLACE AND NOT GIVE MY SPOT TO SOMEONE ELSE! THEN, AFTER SHE GOT ALL OF THIS MONEY FOR NOTHING, I HAD A VERY UNEXPECTED ISSUE ARISE 20MINS AFTER THE CANCELLATION CUTOFF PERIOD AND AFTER PAYING FOR ALL OF THOSE LESSONS FOR NOTHING, SHESTILL WOULD NOT HONOR A 20MINUTE LATE REQUEST TO CANCEL WITHOUT PAYMENT PENALTY. THIS TEACHER IS VERY EXPENSIVE AND I HAVE LOST A LOT OMONEY!I contacted takelessons,con and they would not intervene on my behalf. The owners of this site care NOTHING for the students.

Takelessons.com provides a platform for teachers to steal your money! Just another loophole to rip off consumers.

Terrible service. I tried to register as a teacher and the money was withdrawn from my banking account. Then it took a long time to find out that the account is not active, I won't be able to teach with takelessons and the registration money are not refundable. This is the most frustrationg and disgasting experience i've ever had with online teaching platfroms.

Take lessons continued to charge me for a service that I never used for over 1 year after I canceled. When I called for a refund someone by the name of Brittany M. Who claims to be a manager or supervisor argued with me on the phone, raising her voice at me. She told me that I was lying about the fact that I never used these live lesson service and that I was irresponsible to not have realized I was being charged. She was very rude and condescending as if I was asking for my refund to come out of her own pocket. She refused to connect me to her higher up. I have never been so humiliated in my life.

They are ripping customers with sneaky bussiness practices.We purchased and paid in full for 5, , 30 min.viola classes $150.00.We never purchased or talked about yearly membership or anything like that.We didnt even noticed that this crooked company charged us $9.95 over a year..When we relized called them and get run around, we got called from a rep name is Angela she left ph number the call and discuss the problem but ph is not even in service.What a sneaky crooked people cant even talk the customer, We heard other people same story about getting ripp off this same Take Lessons company out of San Diego CA.We are reporting them to Better Bussiness andall web sites so they cant keep stealing customers money.

I signed up for lessons with a specific instructors and was automatically enrolled in a service I did not want - TakeLessons Live. I spoke with a customer service rep who said that all customers are automatically enrolled in a free 30 day trial that I could not disable, but he walked me through the steps to disable the service as soon as the free trial ended. I completed those steps, but was still charged for the service for three months. I complained to the company and Take Lessons refused to refund all the charges. DO NOT USE THIS SERVICE. YOU WILL BE ENROLLED AND CHARGES FOR SERVICES YOU DO NOT AUTHORIZE AND MAY NOT WANT!

This business is a joke. They sneakily signed me up on auto renew for $9.95 a month for group lesson, which we never used. I realized this after 3 months, and they refused to give me a refund when I complained. Watch your credit cards, they sneak this in there! I called customer service 2 times and they were rude. The one guy told me, "Feel free to leave negative feedback!"

Went to this website blindly looking for private French horn lessons close to my location. When I saw that they had an AVAILABLE what seemed like a reputable French horn teacher less than 5 minutes from my house I immediately bought the small package offered by this teacher.

Once the transaction was processed, Takelessons.com sent me an email saying that the teacher was no longer available BUT they could offer some on-line classes with another teacher...

Furious, I sent an email asking for an immediate reimbursement. I tried calling the Customer Service number which appears to be disconnected. [protected]. After 3 days, nothing. I am dealing with my credit card company to void the transaction.

Credit card on file was wrong due to it having been cancelled for possible fraudulent activity. No notices were give that there was an issue charging the card, which was placed on file with automatic monthly withdrawal permission. Notice went up the day payment was due with no leeway for making payment. New card was updated on account, closest lesson was paid and monthly automatic withdrawal was again set. NO NOTICE give prior to lesson that payment was not successful (new card not attempted by company). Lesson was cancelled by instructor the morning of the lesson two minutes before we were to walk out the door. NO phone number anywhere on website to contact someone directly and get the situation taken care of immediately! NO recourse for contacting company except by email. This is POOR business! Not everyone has immediate access to internet at any given moment in the day.

Please be aware of the overly aggressive sales and marketing of this company. Be aware that you cannot have any contact or discussion with a service provider prior to setting up and paying for lessons. Also be aware that they only method of assessing instructors (company provided profiles) are frequently misleading and false at times. One common trend is to market that all intructors are certified. This is especially misleading as the "certification" is provided by the company itself as is only internal. It is not provided by any outside recognized agency. I also think it reflects how seriously the company views customer service when they have the phone operator handle all complaints. ease do the legwork yourself in finding decent instructors as the company pockets a high % of what you pay and provides less than what they market.

I am extremely put off by this business and their practices. I went in search of a vocal coach and found one that sounded good in theory on their site takelessons.com. Using their 'complete this to ask questions' form I submitted a question I thought would go to the teacher in question. My question was very specific and in no way asked for more details about their company.

An hour or two later I get a phone call from Takelessons.com . Immediately the little girl (and I say little because she sounded like she was 12) goes into a marketing spiel - all of which I already knew from looking at their website.

I stopped her mid pitch and told her I didn't need a commercial, I needed to ask the TEACHER a question. I submitted a question for the TEACHER while on their site, and wanted a response from the TEACHER. She then informed me that 1) she saw no such question from me - which is bull pucky since my phone number was attached to that submission and the only way she could have gotten it was to have gotten said question. But here's the kicker...

2) No, she said. you may not speak to the teacher until you pay for lessons. period.

Now - they claim to have a 100% money back policy if I pay for lessons and hate the teacher after the first lesson which I am sure is true, but as I explained to her, no sane person pays for something in advance without having done the proper research. I don't want to ask my question to a random disinterested party, have that person ask the teacher, then get my answer filtered back to me through the grapevine. I want to talk to the actual person to whom I will be giving my time and my money.

Futher reading has produced many complaints about their refund policy and bait and switch type practices.

Just thought you all should know this, in case you are like me and are not comfortable with the situation.

Company provides a contract at the time you purchase lessons, telling you that you will be charged for scheduled lessons on the 25th of each month. What it does not tell you is that it automatically schedules you more lessons on a continual basis. Be prepared to be charged for lessons that you might not have even agreed to.
In addition, I received 2 emails stating that they did not have my credit card information and that I would need to update that before it could be charged again. This lead me to believe that I would not be charged (since they told me they did not even have my card info). To my surprise, I was indeed charged for lessons that I never scheduled (also could not cancel online) and was charged to a card that they told me they did not have information for.
Upon calling and explaining the situation to customer service, they were resistant to providing a refund. After fighting for 10 minutes they offered to provide a refund of half the charge. Finally, after pointing out that it was stated in two emails that they could not charge me because they did not have card info, they agreed to provide a full refund.
While there have been no issues with the actual instructions/lessons, the admin and billing process simply make this a horrible experience. Beware...they will try to rip you off!

Takelessons.com supposedly provides access to high quality music lessons on a national scale. They do this by connecting music teachers to students via their website. They claim to have a rigorous teacher selection process that only accepts the top 5% of teachers, but this is just untrue. The reality is their process is pretty much first come, first serve when choosing teachers of a certain instrument, and their interview process consists of the most generic questions about "teaching style" basically to make sure you're not a raving lunatic. They make absolutely no effort to actually verify that the teachers are capable of what they claim or have actually had experience in teaching. There very well be good teachers chosen in their program, but I know that they definitely aren't the best. Plus, like all music listing services, they charge exorbitant prices and pay their teachers, many of whom are students, almost nothing.